Faces of Battle

This is the story of photography in war - from the Crimea in the 1850s to the Gulf War, the Balkans and anti-Taliban operations today. The best war photography bares the essence of war by distilling the chaos of combat into indelible visual icons, such as the napalmed young Vietnamese girl or the flag-raising in Iwo Jima. The camera was part of the technological revolution that started to transform warfare in the middle of the 19th century. As weapons have become more deadly, cameras have kept pace, getting smaller, quicker, longer ranged. This volume includes nearly 300 of the most powerful photographs from the battlefront, and, increasingly, home front: unforgettable images like Alexander Gardner's of the Civil War dead after Antietam in 1862, still the bloodiest day in American history; Robert Capa's, Margaret Bourke White's and Yevgeni Khaldei's of the Second World War; or Don McCullin's and Larry Burrows' of Vietnam. Six authoritative essays survey the development of warfare and the emerging role of the camera - from the earliest days, through the First World War and its aftermath, the Second and its antecedents, to the post-1945 independence, cold and terror wars.
Short biographies of the photographers, where identifiable, complete an outstanding pictorial record of war.